Right now there is an active debate about whether right now is a good time to start a new company. Companies have to get money from somewhere to fund operations, and if the potential to make money directly (consumer spending), indirectly (advertising in general, and specifically and separately online advertising and social media) and through support (venture capital investment), then entrepreneurs are facing a pretty grim market for new ventures.

But even in wildly uncertain markets and consumer sentiment, change creates opportunities, especially in a cultural climate that is crying out for significant political, social and economic change.

Why is now a good time to start a business and what opportunities will emerge?

• Change.

  Change was obviously an overriding message throughout the current election season and it rode Obama and numerous other politicians into office. But what other political themes emerged and what opportunities will be created?

  How will the outcry over the excesses of capitalism impact large and small companies? What new standards of information transparency will we want? How can private enterprise create the standards, analysis tools, platforms and devices to deliver more powerful business and public government oversight and management?

  The web has fundamentally changed the power of individuals and small teams to create companies. How will the same forces creating the democratization of the tools of production and distribution have an impact on political organizations and government?

  We’ve all read endless articles analyzing what Obama did to magnetize and mobilize an army of “ground troops” to win the election. Now what will everyone do? How will the focus of the troops shift from winning an election to governing a country? How will consumer change? How will companies adapt?

• Stabilizing the economy is going to fall to government intervention and investment.

  What will the government invest in? What themes did we see in the campaigns? Off the top of my head: Iraq, energy independence, infrastructure investment and revitalization, economic and financial stabilization. Obama has already declared his intention to create jobs by investing in transportation and energy infrastructure projects. While these may not sounds like obvious areas for startups, they are probably more meaningful than another desktop or mobile Twitter client or a new way to share photos.

• Consumer spending is down, but it’s looking for options.

  Yes, consumer spending is down: but it’s also shifting as people re-evaluate where and how much they spend. Anytime a consumer decides to change their spending behaviour, that’s an opportunity for a competitor to offer a better solution more tailored to their current economic situation.

  How will a desire to save money and spend less manifest itself in the consumer marketplace? What can companies help people do?

  • A fundamental shift towards value for money: luxury consumption, organic foods, expensive personal grooming or styling, etc.
  • A broader shift away from spending money and instead spending time.
  • Comparison shopping: prices, value, quality, production origination (“Made in USA”?).
  • Increased bartering for services, more second-hand selling, more of a need for online and offline marketplaces for goods and services, better vendor management and reputation services.
  • Decreased use of credit, less purchasing on credit and more use of rental agreements and shared use across groups of people (including known or unknown people).
  • Decreased desire to enter into long-term contracts (especially in deflationary conditions). How can companies help people get out of long-term contracts, especially for discretionary purchases such as cell phones, gym memberships, etc.?
  • “Insourcing”: shift away from outsourcing the home. As people re-take the responsibility for laundry, cleaning and cooking services back from outsourced providers, what do people need to learn, what do people need to buy, what goods are homeowners, renters, singles and families going to invest in to save money?
  • Continued pressure to reduce transaction costs, decreased use of middlemen.
  • Continued or increased push for inferior goods or counter-cyclical assets.

  The broad cry against over-consumption and the excesses of capitalism will be wide, deep and far-reaching.

• Market uncertainty forces businesses to freeze up, under-invest and under-innovate.

  As companies pause and cancel testing and growing new business opportunities to focus on their existing business lines, now is your time to innovate and catch a company off-guard. Find and hire good people (cheaper than before). Test new working relationships with employees and new partnership and outsourcing arrangements. Negotiate prices and long-term contracts and create new risk-sharing agreements with buyers and suppliers.

  Companies with leveraged excess capacity will be looking for ways to keep their sales and production pipelines full, and now is your time to get them to take a chance on you.

• Less venture capital can be a good thing.

  Less venture capital creates less competition, less overfunded competitors, less focus on finding outside funding and more focus on delivering immediate, tangible value.

  More capital will be diverted from potential new investments to support existing investments to keep them alive. Let venture capitalists throw good money after bad. Given the current costs to launch startups, you may not need significant external funding anyway.

• A slowdown in online advertising will force startups to deliver tangible value from day one.

  A plateau in online advertising will force companies to create better ads. Obviously, it will be harder to create businesses based on indirectly monetizing large audiences through delivering advertising, but similar to the decreased capital argument, the constraint will force entrepreneurs to give up on the misplaced dream of advertising revenue to refocus on demonstrating tangible value from the beginning. That’s a good thing.

  But I’m not declaring the death of web services such as Twitter, Backtype, Disqus, Facebook et. al. These businesses create tangible value solving human problems and desires, but the eventual business models will not be based on advertising. Attempting to monetize communication services by applying the tired model of interstitial, interruptive corporate spam is short-sighted: the nature of the intentions underlying communication and content consumption are very different and require very different business models.

• Available talent and time.

  Unemployment goes up (seemingly) by the day right now. What will everyone do? How will private enterprise re-train and educate the unemployed? How will private enterprises learn to deploy and use the new market of freelancers?

  Even the employed can create the opportunity to create time. Whether that’s the right strategic approach or not, in trying economic conditions most larger companies will focus on reaffirming their core business. It will be difficult to most entrepreneurial and change-oriented employees in larger companies to convince managers and executives to attack new business opportunities. Millenial (Generation Y) employees will be particularly hamstrung; Millenials are ready to dive in and create change but are not yet trusted by the generation of business leaders holding the purse strings.

  Instead of waiting for companies to say yes to your ideas, say yes to yourself. Keep your day job and use your spare time to work on your skills, to build networks and to create and launch business ideas. The opportunity to test your ideas is brighter now than ever; just set your goals accordingly.

How can companies take advantage of broad deflationary conditions, declining consumer spending, massive deleveraging, a loss in trust in big companies and a cry against overconsumption and the excesses of American capitalism?

What trends can entrepreneurs leverage to create new businesses?

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This post was inspired by a notes from Bryan Landers on Twitter about microstartups and by Brooks Jordan on Friendfeed about the opportunities in deflationary conditions. Since I didn’t specifically address either topic here, I’m looking forward to future explorations on those topics…